Claude and her attendants made their first appearance at the Field of Cloth of Gold on Sunday, 10 June, when the royal ladies of both nations made their début at separate banquets, although Claude, being thirty-one weeks pregnant as well as naturally retiring, did leave the more active parts of the ensuing fortnight of festivity to Louise, the queen mother, and Marguerite d’Angoulême, the king’s sister.
56
Queen Claude was, however, the star of the French contingent when the ladies made their first appearance in public at the joust on the following Monday.
57
She wore cloth of silver over an underskirt of cloth of gold, and rode in her coronation litter of cloth of silver decorated with friars’ knots in gold, a device which she had taken over from her mother.
58
Her ladies rode in three carriages similarly draped in silver and, no doubt, were dressed to match the queen. Claude was also the hostess on the French side when, on several evenings, the kings, attended by ladies and gentlemen of their respective courts (usually in masque costume), changed places. Where Anne was in all this we do not know. Beside Queen Claude, one would assume. What seems unthinkable is that she was not present at all or that she did not meet Henry VIII there for
a
second time.
59
The later sixteenth century interpreted Anne Boleyn’s long service at the French court to mean that she must have had close relations with Marguerite d’Angoulême as well as Queen Claude.
60
Since Marguerite became a noted — if somewhat eclectic - supporter of religious reform, the assumption was easy to make. Soon even careful scholars like Herbert of Cherbury took it as a fact that Anne served in the household of ‘the Duchess of Alençon, sister to Francis’.
61
That, however, is highly unlikely; when reporting Francis I’s complaint in January 1522 about Anne leaving France, the imperial ambassadors described her quite unequivocally as one of his wife’s ladies, just as she had been in 1515.
62
On the other hand, Anne does seem to have known Marguerite. The duchess clearly must have met Thomas Boleyn in June 1519 at the christening of Claude’s second child, the future Henri II, where he represented Henry VIII, and it is hard to believe that he did not introduce his daughter.
63
True, Marguerite may well have dismissed Anne as merely one of her sister-in-law’s waiting-women. Something to that effect can be read into the efforts which the English made to get Marguerite (by then queen of Navarre) to accompany her brother to Calais in 1532 to meet Henry and Anne.
64
Francis came alone, and the conclusion Pierre Jourda drew from this was that imperial diplomats at the time were right in saying that Marguerite was bitterly hostile to the projected marriage.
65
Yet the French refusal to nominate ladies to the official Calais delegation could have a different explanation. Francis was just then angling for a match between his son Henry and the pope’s niece Catherine de Medici — hardly the moment to appear to give public endorsement to Anne’s position.
66
Anne Boleyn’s later behaviour certainly took her intimacy with Marguerite for granted. A message from her to the princess in September 1535 was ‘that her greatest wish, next to having a son, was to see you again’, while in the previous year Anne had assured her that although at the 1532 meeting there had been ‘everything proceeding between both kings to the queen’s grace’s singular comfort, there was no one thing which her grace so much desired ... as the want of the said queen of Navarre’s company, with whom to have conference, for more causes than were meet to be expressed, her grace is most desirous.’
67
These could be the remarks of someone trying to turn mere acquaintance into a bosom friendship, but there are other indications that Marguerite was at least by this time favourable to England, and to Anne. The duke of Norfolk had two five-hour consultations with her in 1533, which convinced him that she was ‘as affectionate to your highness as if she were your own sister, and likewise to the queen ... My opinion is that she is your good and assured friend.’
68
In July 1534 Anne’s intimacy with Francis’s sister was exploited to conceal Henry’s wish to withdraw from an agreed meeting with Francis. She was, Anne confided to Marguerite, expecting a child and so prevented from travelling, but she was very anxious to come to any meeting and, what was more, she needed Henry with her at the time of her confinement — so could the meeting be postponed until April 1535?
69
The true reason seems to have been Henry’s fear of trouble at home, but why he should have felt the need for this roundabout way of postponing something as notoriously chancy as a royal summit meeting is not obvious. Whatever the motive, Anne’s brother, who took the message to Marguerite, was told to insist that Henry was so determined to meet Francis as arranged that:
Her Grace is now driven to her sheet anchor in this behalf, that is, to the only help of the said Queen of Navarre, and the goodness of the good King her brother, for Her Grace’s sake, and at this Her Grace’s suit and contemplation, to stay the King’s Highness her husband, and to prorogue their interview till a more commodious and convenient time for all parties.
Nor was this the only occasion when the English used Marguerite as a stepping-stone to Francis; they did the same in November 1535, though without the ‘woman to woman’ touch.
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Anne Boleyn’s career at the French court came to an abrupt halt towards the end of 1521 when she was summoned back to England.
71
Francis took this as one more sign of the growing
rapprochement
between his alleged friend Henry and his perpetual enemy, Charles V, although war between England and France did not break out until the following May. But, as Wolsey explained, Anne had been recalled for an entirely different reason. For this we have to go back to 1515 and the death in his nineties of Anne’s grandfather, Thomas Butler, earl of Ormonde, leaving no legitimate offspring but the Boleyns and the St Legers as joint heirs-general. Given Sir Thomas’s closeness to the king, it is no surprise that livery of his mother’s new estates was granted in four months, but to be granted and to occupy were two very different things, at least in Ireland, where the rights of the heirs-general were obstructed by the late earl’s cousin and heir-male, Piers Butler, who had been acting for years as the representative of the absentee earl.
72
Ireland was rarely high on the early Tudor agenda, but the rights of the Boleyns were the one topic there in ten years in which Henry VIII did show an interest, no doubt prompted by Sir Thomas. Letters to the Irish lord deputy, the earl of Kildare, produced a hearing on 18 November 1516 at which the Boleyns and St Legers were able to prove their case, but as the archbishop of Dublin explained to Wolsey three weeks later, legal right was not enough.
73
Piers Butler, styling himself ‘earl of Ormonde’, had mustered the support of the most powerful Irish lords, including Kildare himself, and was calling for trial before a common-law jury where, of course, Sir Thomas Boleyn would have had no chance. What was more, the English interest in Ireland needed Butler. No settlement was reached, and when in the spring of 1520 a second burst of royal interest selected the earl of Surrey, Thomas Howard, to go to Ireland as lord lieutenant, Surrey suggested to Wolsey that James Butler, Sir Piers’ son, should marry Anne Boleyn and unite the warring claims.
Where Surrey got the idea is not clear. It was certainly from neither Wolsey nor Henry. Since Surrey was Boleyn’s brother-in-law one might be inclined to suspect Boleyn (appearing reasonable might well suit the book of a man only recently restored to Wolsey’s favour), were it not for the absence of any subsequent Boleyn enthusiasm for the scheme. It may rather be that we have here another example of Thomas Howard’s skill in taking care of Thomas Howard. He loathed Ireland and knew that the king would soon tire of a problem which he did not have the resources or interest to solve. James Butler was available: he was being brought up — or kept as a hostage - in Wolsey’s household. Surrey’s niece Anne was of an age to marry and could easily be recalled from France. What better escape for Surrey than a scheme which would make respectable the abandonment of Ireland to Piers Butler as earl of Ormonde, with Anne and James Butler sealing his loyalty to and dependence on Henry (as long as Henry was looking)?
74
No sooner had Howard arrived in Ireland than Piers was his right-hand man, his title as earl taken for granted, his sterling virtues and commitment to the English cause trumpeted in letter after letter.
75
By early September 1520 the earl had got the Irish council to propose the match to Henry VIII, and a letter of 6 October jogging Wolsey’s memory about the proposal crossed with a reply giving the king’s reactions:
And like as yc desire us to endeavour ourself that a marriage may be had and made betwixt the earl of Ormonde’s son and the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn Kt., controller of our household; so we will ye be [a] mean[s] to the said earl for his agreeable consent and mind thereunto, and to advertise us, by your next letters, of what towardness ye shall find the said earl in that behalf. Signifying unto you, that in the mean time, we shall advance the said matter with our controller, and certify you how we shall find him inclined thereunto accordingly.
76
Surrey kept up the campaign, sending over in December the draft of an Act for the Irish parliament, recognizing Butler as head of his family.
77
And then, nine months’ silence.
The Boleyn-Butler marriage resurfaced in October 1521 after Surrey, already pressing for a recall, had fallen seriously ill. He appealed for approval of the Act in Butler’s favour, asked for the return of James to help his father and sent a personal messenger to press his own problems.
78
Butler, meanwhile, sensed victory and started to haggle for the return of his son and the completion of the marriage with Anne.
79
Wolsey, who all this while was tied up in a European peace conference at Calais, advised Henry in mid-November that James Butler was too valuable a hostage to be surrendered, but
I shall, at my return to your presence, devise with Your Grace how the marriage betwixt him and Sir Thomas Boleyn[’s] daughter may be brought to pass, which shall be a reasonable cause to tract [delay] the time for sending his said son over to him; for the perfecting of which marriage I shall endeavour myself at my return, with all effect.
80
Wolsey left Calais on 28 November, and soon after that Anne must have received her recall to England.
81
Yet Wolsey, for the first but not for the last time, did not ‘perfect’ marriage for Anne Boleyn. Why is not clear. Butler’s arch-rival in Ireland, the earl of Kildare, reported that by May 1523 Sir Piers had decided that he would have to defend his claim by force.
82
According to Kildare’s new wife, formerly Elizabeth Grey, a woman with court experience reaching back as far as her attendance on the king’s sister in France in 1514, Butler was trying to bind nobles to support him against the Boleyn claim, and the Kildares, fresh from England, knew that Henry would not approve.
83
If we are to take seriously these straws in the wind, then it was Butler who gave up hope of a settlement by marriage, presumably because Boleyn made difficulties - and the man who in 1521 had been promoted treasurer of the household was in a position to be obstructive. On this construction, what Anne’s father was standing out for was the earldom of Ormonde, and her marriage was a lever to that end. However, it took until February 1528 to make progress by way of a compromise. This saw the Butlers taking the disputed lands on a long lease at very moderate rents, in return for surrendering the Ormonde title and receiving instead the earldom of Ossory.
84
Even then the last piece in the settlement, the earldom of Ormonde for Thomas Boleyn, slotted into place only in December 1529 after Wolsey had fallen from favour. It may well be that the cardinal was none too pleased at the way events had gone against him and once again delayed Boleyn to teach him who was in charge. But long before that, Henry’s interest in Anne had become obvious, and Wolsey may well have rued the day when he had been unable to pack her off to Ireland.
Against this, it would seem curious that Wolsey should have taken it upon himself to ‘perfect’ Anne’s marriage in 1521 without first consulting her father, for Sir Thomas was then at Calais with him. Perhaps Wolsey never intended the possibility of a match between James and Anne to be anything other than a long-term inducement to the Butlers to behave. If this alternative scenario is the correct one, we must see the period after Anne’s return from France as a time of semi-engagement to James - and separation, for he returned to Ireland in the summer of 1526. Certainly he was not the only suitor she had.
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Yet when he returned to England in the summer of 1528 it was to find even competition a thing of the past. The king had declared himself, and Anne was no longer on the marriage market.
86
3
DÉBUT AT THE ENGLISH COURT
A
NNE Boleyn a courtier’s daughter, Anne Boleyn being educated abroad, Anne Boleyn a prospective bride. But the first direct glimpse we get of Anne on her return from France is at a court pageant in March 1522 — doing precisely what she had been trained for over all these years, and doing it before the eyes of experts from the Habsburg court at Brussels. A new chapter had just opened in the interminable saga of the Italian wars, and England, despite the protestations at the Field of Cloth of Gold, had decided to back Charles V rather than Francis I. Negotiations for a joint attack on France, a visit by the emperor to England and his betrothal to the Princess Mary were nearing completion, and the English court, to honour the ambassadors of the new ally, laid on specially magnificent pre-Lent festivities.